Author: Simone Butler

Last night my cousins and I held our Thanksgiving gathering over Zoom. The Nevada City contingent kept cutting in and out, but we made the best of it, thankful to see one another again after an entire year.…

Come gather ’round, people wherever you roam

And admit that the waters around you have grown

And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin’, then you better start swimmin’

Or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changin’

There are times when you can feel the zeitgeist shifting.…

In her wonderful book, Jambalayah, Yeye Luisah Teish tells of a strange event that happened near the end of 1982. She was alone, bedridden with a severe upper respiratory disorder.…

Years ago, a prominent spiritual leader shared an intriguing incident that impacted her life.  In the May 2020 issue of Science of Mind, Rev. David Ault recalled her story of attending her first high-profile political fundraiser.…

Some stars burn more brightly than others; Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of them. She mightily stoked the fires of justice, leaving a legacy we’d all do well to emulate.…

We are living through extremely chaotic times. As Thomas Paine said just prior to the American Revolution – another very volatile period – “These are the times that try men’s souls.”…

I’d paddled out far into the tranquil bay on that warm summer afternoon. Close enough that my parents could still see me, but far enough away that I was blissfully alone.…

It was July 21, 1944, a blustery day at Mitchell Field, Long Island. As gale-force winds buffeted the plane he was in, Dad’s heart raced. He knew it was not safe to jump.…

Just before his death on July 17, Rep. John Lewis insisted on visiting Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, DC. “I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on,” said the civil rights leader and congressman in a New York Times Op-Ed.…

What would you do if someone you trusted implicitly, who’d been your angel for many years, suddenly became your devil? That’s what astrologer and TV personality Walter Mercado had to deal with, when his long-time manager stole his name, likeness and ability to earn a living – sparking a six year court battle in which Mercado lost millions and suffered a near-fatal heart attack from the stress.…

What does it mean to be a patriot? The term commonly signifies a person who loves his or her country enough to support and defend it. We tend to think of the American colonists who, in 1773, dumped 342 chests of tea into the Boston harbor, precipitating the bloody American Revolution not long after as they threw off oppressive British rule.…

Kimberly Baskett Gunter was terrified. It was the third time her two-month-old daughter had nearly choked to death, yet doctors still couldn’t find anything wrong with her. This time, the new mother demanded to see every specialist in the hospital.…

Rioting in the streets. Cop cars torched. Protests in at least 140 cities. After the horrifying May 25 killing of George Floyd by police, frustrations already stretched to the breaking point during Covid-19 lock-downs could no longer be contained.…

Lately we seem to be living in a parallel universe. Fact or fiction?  Wisdom or delusion? When reality is as distorted as a fun-house mirror and people are at each other’s throats, it’s hard to say for sure.…

What do you do when you’re at your wits’ end? You step outside and howl. You howl for a front-line worker who died in a car wreck on her way to work.…